Thu, 31 Dec 2009

It's the last few hours of 2009 here in South Africa so i wanted to take the opportunity really quickly to wish the 2 readers of this blog all the best for new year..

Most security "pundits" are currently doing their 2010 predictions. (although in truth few of them so far have been particularly surprising or out-there.. "Adobe will be brutalized" ? really? hows that different to 08 or 09)(One really has to question how the current whipping boy for exploit writers managed to be a key contributor to Gary McGraws BSIM Model, but i digress)

I'm going to skip the prognostication this time, and instead will go for a new years resolution... From Tim O' Reilly's 2003 advice to "Buy where i shop" a little more.. I have previously spoken about @timoreilly's awesome and life-changing "Work on stuff that matters" talk, and this piece is kinda similar and scarily prescient considering its publish date.

Wed, 16 Dec 2009

Last week had two "cloud-security" related articles hit the inter-webs.. After our Vegas09 talk on "clobbering the cloud" we had a brief chat to Rob Lemos, who called us up again, so we ended up adding the soundbyte to his piece in Technology review along with guys like Moxie Marlinspike and Danny MacPherson [here]

We also showed up on Read/Write Web, where we were called "security nerds" and "black hats"

We understand well the idea of being in favor or something, or against something, but we don't particularly understand how criticism fits into this dichotomy.

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The reason a person is critical of a thing is because he is passionate about that thing. In order to have a critical opinion, you have to love something enough to understand it, and then love it so much more that you want it to be better. Passion breeds critical thinking.

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“That sucks” is negativity. “That sucks, here's why, and here's how to fix it” is criticism, and it comes from a place of love. That's the difference.

Everyone says they're comfortable with criticism and with critics, because not being able to handle criticism is a sign of immaturity. What people really want, though, are cheerleaders. Nowhere in life is this more true than in business.

A healthy business needs passionate employees to succeed. Critics are the most passionate people you can find, but we're conditioned to assume that critics are negative curmudgeons with nothing more than slings and arrows to contribute. So rather than seeking out critics, employers seek out cheerleaders.